2.3 United Kingdom – OSH Programmes
The HSC is responsible for establishing national strategies (whereas the HSE and local authorities are substantially responsible for implementing these and delivering the desired outcomes). The four themes for the current strategy are:63
- developing closer partnerships
- helping people to benefit from effective health and safety
- focusing on their core business and the right interventions where they are best placed to reduce workplace injury and ill health
- communicating effectively.
2.3.1 National strategies
Current health and safety law in the UK, including much of that from Europe, is based on the principle of risk assessment. This is operationalised by the HSC and the HSE through a variety of approaches:
- An occupational health and safety policy
- Risk assessment, using hazard identification
- Investigation and enforcement (inspections)
- Strategic programmes.
According to the HSE, “hazard” means anything that can cause harm (e.g. chemicals, electricity, working from ladders), and “risk” is the chance, high or low, that someone will be harmed by the hazard.
The current HSC Business Plan63, 64 outlines the investigation and enforcement plan, strategic delivery programmes (SDPs), and strategic enabling programmes (StEPs) for specific areas.
2.3.1.1 Investigation and enforcement
Investigating incidents and enquiring into citizens’ complaints and concerns remain important activities. The HSE will continue to be tough on those businesses that wilfully break the law and put people at risk. Inspectors will not hesitate to use their powers of enforcement (including prosecution where necessary) to achieve the necessary improvements to safeguard people’s health, safety and welfare. The HSC has been pressing for penalties for health and safety offences that properly reflect their seriousness, and the government is committed to raising the maximum penalties when there is a legislative opportunity and as parliamentary time allows. The HSC is playing an active role with the Cabinet Office’s Better Regulation Executive, which is reviewing the sanctions available to regulators – including penalties. This review is due to report in early 2007. The HSC is also evaluating the HSC’s Enforcement Policy Statement, which is due for review in 2007.
HSE inspectors and other front-line staff play a critical role by:
- inspecting workplaces
- providing information and advice to better manage risk
- carrying out assessments
- investigating incidents when things go wrong
- investigating complaints
- enforcing the law, including prosecution, when there has been a serious breach.
The HSC recognises that enforcement action, as well as dealing directly with those who break the law, has an important deterrent effect in the wider health and safety community. The HSC welcomed the recent groundbreaking fines from the courts for serious breaches of health and safety.
The related StEP will continue through 2006/07 to examine the HSE’s and local authorities’ formal enforcement activities and make proposals and implementation plans that will better enable the HSE and local authorities by:
- using enforcement to support the Fit for Work, Fit for Life, Fit for Tomorrow Strategic Development Programme (Fit3 SDP)
- investigating and prosecuting more efficiently and effectively
- identifying, targeting and bringing “rogue” traders to account
- optimising and sustaining, through communications, the ripple and deterrent effect of these activities
- ensuring that the relevant programme proposals mesh with the HSE’s work to control major hazards.
2.3.1.2 The HSE’s strategic programmes
The HSE has established two SDPs as the main agent for delivering the Public Service Agreement (PSA) targets:
- (1) Fit3
- (2) Major Hazards.
Four StEPs support the SDP’s work.
Fit3
Fit3 is a three-year programme focused on delivering the conventional health and safety element of the PSA. It is now entering its second year. Fit3 is divided into three main work blocks, comprising a mix of targeted interventions, aligned with conventional health and safety PSA targets (i.e. injury reduction, ill health reduction and reduction in days lost due to work activity). The SDP’s content is based on analysis of the incidence of injury and ill health across known hazard and business sector hot spots.
A mixture of project work, programme-directed inspection and (where necessary) investigation and enforcement supports each work block. Other important work streams, involving staff from across the HSE (e.g. utilising communication activity, engaging with stakeholders, developing partnerships and revising standards and legislation) make significant contributions to Fit3’s work. In 2005/06, there was a further move to focus HSE inspectors’ activity on areas where their enforcement powers are most likely to be required.
Major initiatives and interventions planned to achieve a reduction in the incidence of work-related fatal and major injuries include:
- working with stakeholders to produce an agreed set of workplace transport management standards
- “Moving Goods Safely” – a supply chain initiative aimed at reducing injury and ill health arising from the movement of goods in the logistics, road haulage and goods delivery sectors
- undertaking a major media campaign aimed at promoting safe work at height and implementing the Work at Height Regulations 2005, backed by operational activity to embed improved working practices
- addressing slips and trips in target sectors, including the chemical industry, using a range of operational interventions and following up and evaluating last year’s “Watch Your Step” campaign
- revising the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 1994, ACOP and guidance, followed by a campaign aimed at the construction and design industries to raise awareness.
Initiatives to achieve a reduction in work-related ill health include:
- providing an independent, three-tier health and safety support service for small firms. “Pathfinders” for Workplace Health Connect was launched in February 2006. The service includes a confidential, impartial advice and support helpline/website for smaller businesses, focused on occupational health issues, reducing sickness absence and assisting rehabilitation and return to work
- rolling out the HSE’s Stress Management Standards to 2,000 organisations in local and national government and the health and financial services sectors, using a direct marketing strategy aimed at chief executives, in conjunction with a series of workshops for human resource professionals
- following up the success of last year’s national publicity and stakeholder engagement campaign on musculoskeletal disorders, Backs! 2006, supported by a targeted inspection campaign
- a series of Safety and Health Awareness Days addressing occupational asthma aimed at the motor vehicle repair and woodworking industries, supported by a targeted inspection campaign and wide-scale operational interventions on asthma and skin disease in local authority enforced sectors
- supporting the revised Noise at Work Regulations with an awareness and worker involvement campaign.
To achieve a reduction in days lost due to work-related injuries and ill health, the Fit3 programme will continue to target the public sector by:
- maintaining the commitment of other government departments to tackling this issue through the Ministerial Task Force, in particular seeking to influence senior management in the top 350 public sector organisations, sharing best practice and encouraging departmental “champions”
- working with employers in the health service to address key issues including stress, manual handling, slips and trips, sickness absence and return to work, violence and aggression, and safety by design
- developing a benchmarking tool to measure local authority performance on managing sickness absence.
Major Hazards SDP
The Major Hazards SDP continues to focus on the HSE’s work in regulating and assuring the safe management and control of those industries where catastrophic failures have the potential to cause significant harm.
(a) Nuclear Major Hazards SDP
The HSE’s Nuclear Programme delivers work designed to achieve effective and efficient nuclear safety regulation, the ongoing aims being:
- to prevent major nuclear incidents
- to maintain the effective management of nuclear waste
- to reduce the number of reports of occurrences with the potential to lead to an accident.
During 2006/07, the Programme will face a significant amount of new work resulting from restructuring within the industry, accelerated decommissioning and clean-up, and new investment programmes. Particular emphasis will then be placed on prioritising nuclear work to target the HSE’s regulatory activities correctly and achieve greater consistency, proportionality and productivity.
There will also be further refinements to the Programme’s Integrated Intervention Strategy, developing targeted intervention strategies for every duty holder/site so as to ensure that duty holders maintain their safety focus in the face of industry changes and other issues. Within the intervention strategy for each site:
- a significant proportion of the planned inspection interventions will be focused on the “cornerstone” factors of compliance (e.g. licence condition 22, which covers modifications to existing plant), which contribute most to the licensee’s safety management performance, and the prevention of significant nuclear events
- the HSE will secure improvements in the quality of duty holders’ safety submissions. To support this, the Programme will clarify standards and expectations for its staff and duty holders on fit-for-purpose safety cases, and also clarify what constitutes adequate licensee arrangements for producing safety cases. The revision of the NSD’s Safety Assessment Principles will be completed and work started to revise the underpinning Technical Assessment Guides.
(b) Offshore Major Hazards SDP
The Offshore Programme continues to strive to improve health and safety standards by reducing risk in the offshore oil and gas sectors and diving industries. In 2006/07, key work streams include:
- continuing a key inspections project to inspect over 100 installations over three years, aimed at improving asset integrity and working with industry to develop an asset integrity tool kit
- carrying out a structured inspection programme, targeting deck and drilling operations on all offshore installations to eliminate fatalities and reduce all other incidents from these activities by 20% from a 2001 benchmark, and to disseminate lessons learned to the industry
- implementing the revised Offshore Installations Safety Case Regulations, to better target assessment resources and enhance the approach to validation
- working with industry and trade unions via “Step Change in Safety” and the Offshore Industry Advisory Committee to improve workforce involvement (including continued publication of the HSE’s newsletter for offshore, Tea-shack News).
(c) Onshore Major Hazards SDP
The Onshore Chemical Industries Programme has developed a five-year strategy for health and safety in the chemical and associated major hazard industries. It sets out how to deliver the long-term aim of securing the health and safety of workers and members of the public by preventing major accidents and limiting the consequences of potential major accidents. Key work streams include:
- targeted intervention at the 1,100 major hazard sites regulated under the Control of Major Accident Hazards Regulations
- working with industry to develop Process Safety Performance Measures and incident precursor measures
- devolving the planning tool, used presently by the HSE during assessments of the potential consequences of land usage around major hazard sites, to local planning authorities
- structured inspection/education programmes, at selected installations, on health issues such as dermatitis, legionella and asbestosis.
The HSE will deploy significant resources to investigating the December 2005 explosion and fire at the Buncefield oil storage depot. It will follow the inspection with appropriately targeted inspections and by promulgating the lessons learned.
The Onshore Specialised Industries Programme also continues to deliver priority interventions for the mining and open-cast coal sector, the gas supply and major pipeline industries, explosives, and dangerous pathogens and genetically modified organisms.
StEPs
The local authorities’ and the HSE’s Working Together StEP aims to build a partnership that will make the best use of the respective strengths of the HSE and the local authorities in tackling national, regional and local priorities, and deliver the conventional health and safety PSA targets.
During 2006/07, the StEP will take the remaining steps needed to make HSE-local authority joint planning of field activities a reality. The HSE will build and sustain an enduring partnership by:
- implementing the agreed revised governance arrangements for the partnership nationally, regionally and locally, including the work of the Local Government Panel (in routine dialogue with the HSC), a reconstituted HELA and regional partnership arrangements
- providing better training, support and communication for and with local authorities, directly linked to the HSC’s priorities and reflecting the needs of the Fit3 SDP
- continuing to make science and technology funding available to local authorities for new projects, and evaluating those already started
- evaluating pilot work carried out on joint HSE/local authority inspector authorisation in enforcement, with the aim of creating a flexible system and structure that allow joint resources to be used in the most effective manner
- working with other regulators and local authorities to develop a more joined-up approach to describing priorities for local authorities, and how regulatory outcomes can be measured to ensure continuous improvement of their delivery
- delivering the HSC’s priority initiatives by the HSE’s partnership teams in the field, working with local authorities to coordinate the various activities and elements of the partnership.
The HSE continues to promote appropriate management of health and safety as an integral part of effective business management. The Business Involvement StEP works to promote the business benefits of well managed health and safety, greater corporate responsibility and accountability for health and safety, and better understanding of health and safety benefits in small businesses. The StEP’s work for this year will include:
- delivering the benefits from a more customer-focused approach being piloted through the Large Organisation Partnership Pilot
- further promoting corporate responsibility, director accountability and health and safety performance reporting through, for example, guidance and self-assessment/benchmarking tools
- ensuring that small businesses have access to simple, easy-to-understand information and advice from HSE publications and web material and the Small Business Service’s website.
The Worker Involvement StEP will continue to secure more and better worker involvement in health and safety risk management by raising awareness, influencing attitudes and changing behaviours. In 2007, the HSE plans to do this by:
- consulting on the most effective ways to stimulate better dialogue between workers and employers
- publishing and promoting case studies giving practical examples of how organisations have introduced and improved worker involvement, in particular through the HSE’s delivery programmes
- administering the third (and final) annual round of the Worker Safety Adviser (WSA) Challenge Fund, evaluating the second round projects and disseminating emerging examples of good practice, and developing proposals for the future of the WSA initiative, implementing any ministerial decision.